8 Sci-Fi Writers on Where Star Trek Should Go Next

Star Trek is a show that spans countless worlds, involves the lives of hundreds of species, and tackles themes of war, love, loss, humanity—and whatever happened in that one where Deanna Troi turns in a fish. Star Trek: Discovery, the first Trek series in a dozen years, is now exploring that universe. But now that the franchise is back on TV, we couldn't help but wonder what adventures other sci-fi writers would like to see. So we asked them.

There's no better time for Star Trek to do what it does best—engaging in tough moral dilemmas. The episode I'm most interested in seeing Star Trek explore is one that addresses the scourge of perpetual war, and how to de-escalate it and come out the other side.

The Star Trek episode "A Taste of Armageddon" envisioned a 500-year-long war that continued to persist because the horror and brutality of that war were hidden from the people who fought it. It's the horror of war, Kirk says, that forces us to end it. As long as we are able to put people to death neatly, cleanly, behind closed doors, away from the eyes of the media, of witnesses, war will continue without end.

As America soon enters its second decade of ongoing war in the Middle East, it's worth asking this question again via the safe space-western format that allows us to divorce our political baggage from the moral question, and interrogate ourselves and our actions in a way that doesn't feel like an attack.

I want a Star Trek that makes me engage with my own world in new ways, and challenges me to solve problems using the skills that made the series great: knowing and understanding your enemy, finding common ground, and being open to new experiences, to not just boldly go where no one has gone, but to not be a dick about it when you get there.

I want see an episode that tells us not only how to surface the horrors of war to drive action, but to create the egalitarian future Star Trek has always promised us.

There's always something that's bugged me about Star Trek. In almost all the series and movies, the focus is on the officers: the ones on the bridge, the guys heading out to fix whatever mess the redshirts have gotten themselves into this time. But what always struck me about ships like the Enterprise —and now, the Discovery—is that they have a huge crew. The Enterprise alone has a complement of over a thousand.

I've always wondered about the low-level workers of Star Trek. The ones who make up those numbers. The Enterprise may not have needed cooks (thanks to food replicators) but those thousand crew must have jobs.

What I'd love to see Discovery do, at some point, is tell the story of one or two of these grunts. Not the redshirts. I'm talking about the man responsible for maintaining the toilets, or the one running the laundry machines—after all, some poor schlub has to get stuck with the gig. Someone at the bottom of the food chain, slowly rising through the ranks, becoming the most experienced officer on board and knowing every nook and cranny of a particular ship. I'm much more interested in that than I am the travails of yet another Starfleet captain.

I've always been fascinated by the transporter and the various capabilities it has. The fact that the transporter saves a limited-time backup of every person it transports was only touched on a few times in any of the series. This makes sense; there are too many ways it could be abused as a Deus Ex Machina fix for half the problems they come across in the series. (Oh, Tasha got killed by a black goo? It's OK, we saved her DNA and can print you a new one right away, Captain!)

Still, putting aside the difficulties surrounding the aging and dead actors, the ultimate Star Trek show would be for a Ferengi-financed hacker to gain access to the transporter traces of every member of every Star Trek show and bring them all back.

The new Star Trek crew would be assigned the many-season rescue of each character from all the other shows. The characters would be mixed up and scattered around the universe. For example, the Klingons would be having gladiatorial battles with Kirk and Picard to finally settle the greatest debate to plague my generation. (Team Picard all the way.)

There would be a side romantic plot with Troi, Worf, every version of Dax, and Alexander living on Risa. Speaking of Alexander, all the kids, Nog, Jake, Alexander, Molly, and young Wesley, could have a Risa-based Stand By Me-kind of adventure. Riker and Bashir could be stranded on an all-male planet where no one is impressed by them. Bones and Data could have an Odd Couple/Buddy Cop kind of adventure. I can see The Doctor, Crusher, Bashir, Pulaski, and Phlox in their own ER-type story.

I could go on, but you get the idea. It's always a good idea to limit your tech when you make it "oh dear God, that thing is too powerful!" But it's also a possibility to make a compelling plot about the abuse of said powerful machine when it's put in the hands of an incompetent, or a villain.

"In every revolution, there is one person with a vision." Those are Captain Kirk's last words to alt-Spock in the classic episode "Mirror, Mirror," encouraging Spock to lead an uprising against the Terran Empire that is the mirror universe's Federation. And as Kirk and crew beam back to their reality, Spock admits he kind of likes the idea, almost smiling behind his goatee.

I'd love to write the story of that revolution: Spock as liberator of a galaxy of aliens oppressed by militaristic human oppression. We would learn the ideology Spock develops as the design for a better galactic order, a utopian political economy infused with Vulcan logic and just enough human heart. Watch him take down the system with the Machiavellian instincts of a 3-D chess master, in service of a more ethical new order. Stopping along the way at the interstellar Woodstock for the mother of all Vulcan lute jams. To the Halkan Station!

After spending a truly embarrassing amount of time tracing the timeline of Star Trek costumes in the wake of Discovery, I have to admit I'm fascinated by the development of clothing in Trek. (Any spacefaring initiative moving on a century-long timeline from submarine jumpsuits to Technicolor demilitarized separates by hitting Civil War-adjacent athleisure at the 90-year mark has my attention – and raises some questions.)

Outside the world of the show, we all know the aesthetics of every Trek era reflects the world around us, not the world around them, and the clothes are more about contemporary aesthetics than in-world ones. (It's why we forgive prequels with superior computer interfaces; when the chips are down, we appreciate a good UI more than we appreciate aesthetic continuity.) But within the world of the show, Trek costumes run the gamut from vaguely military color-coded jumpsuits to civilian wear that reflects the vast swaths of diversity and knitwear throughout the Alpha quadrant. Clothes are deeply important, and understanding them (or regulating them) is crucial. Someone has to make those decisions. That process must be intense.

I'd love to write an anthology series about the division of Starfleet responsible for clothes: updating uniforms in reaction to internal upheaval and/or comfort complaints; writing handbooks on cultural clothing norms for Starfleet that need to be updated with every first contact; navigating fatal differences between replicated uniforms and the real thing every time Starfleet has to infiltrate the Romulans. Do textile regulations affect diplomatic relations? Has Starfleet ever had to scramble to recover from a sartorial faux pas? Is there a Prime Directive for purple lamé? Clothing is one of the places Federation cultures retain their individuality; there's no way that's free of tension. Fashion is a complicated business, wherever people boldly go.

Discovery is mining some interesting historical conflict by choosing to set itself early in the Trek universe's established timeline, but in a sense, that removes some of the suspense—we already know the ending. There's an assumption that post-Voyager Trek would be a dry, peace-and-prosperity equilibrium, stuck with Alien-of-the-Week stories and a backdrop of happy and prosperous Federation worlds.

In reality, of course, any culture that doesn't change stagnates, and there's always conflict to be found in change. I'd love to see a series focusing on a Starfleet ship that's tasked with enforcing the Federation's treaties and agreements, only to encounter real, practical reasons why they can't—or shouldn't—follow orders. With an ever-growing—and bureaucracy-bloated—organization on their hands, our heroes would encounter both new species who want to avoid the Federation's strictures, and established member planets who feel they've outgrown the organization.

Traditionally, Trek characters have been given a lot of leeway when it comes to obeying the rules in specific situations. Here they would have to cope with major fault lines—including corruption and infighting—in the Federation itself. Our crew would have to weigh duty against enemies both without and within.

Ultimately, of course, since Trek is Trek and humanity needs to end up united, we'd find some allies and lose others, and probably end up with something very Federation-like. But I think there's something to be said for blowing it all up first.

I really want to write about the Klingons as they appear in Star Trek: Discovery. All we ever see are upper-class Klingons who are obsessed with their houses and reputations—aside from "Son of No One" Voq, who is basically a religious fundamentalist. Where are all the Klingon scientists who think Kahless never existed? And what about the social democratic Klingons who are trying to dismantle the Klingon caste system?

As Voq consolidates the radical right wing Klingon factions, I think there has to be a countervailing political movement. So I'd tell a story of a Klingon named T'kara who goes to the Klingon science academy (because why wouldn't they have one?), and starts a movement based on the idea that Klingons should elect their leaders. T'kara is Voq's main political opponent, and she insists that they have a debate based on rhetoric rather than fighting with bat'leths. It becomes a giant scandal, but also the first time Klingons have a chance to see people try to defeat each other with speeches and ideas rather than brute strength.

My dream (and I admit, this is a silly dream) is a Star Trek story about the finance department aboard a Constitution-class starship. That has to be a crazy job for a business-minded person. One moment, you're an econ major at Starfleet, and the next moment you're crunching numbers on an Excel spreadsheet at warp speed. It's not the most glamorous job. But that's the point: These aren't even the redshirts. They're like white-collared shirts, regular corporate grunts who work in an office building that happens to get shot at on a regular basis.

So we're with characters who are totally unremarkable and through their eyes we get to see what life is like in the lowest rungs of the Federation. I mean, what happens when you have to reorder dilithium crystals and the price is spiking? Who makes sure there's enough supplies for taco day at the employee cafeteria? What do people gossip about on a starship—like, which bridge officers have bad breath? Are there ever layoffs? Raises? Performance evaluations? I want to know these things.

Does anyone else want to know these things? If so, please contribute to my Kickstarter for Star Trek: Accounts Receivable.

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